The Wreckage
by doriennegray
Summary: "He leaves ruin in his wake. He's always known it. Widows. Orphans. He buries that part of his work. But he's never looked his wreckage in the eye." Frank Castle's simple mission is derailed when he encounters an enigmatic young girl who forces him to confront the aftermath of the punishment he doles out. Mostly Frank, but also a dose of Frank/Karen coming.
1. Mission Derailed

**Note: You know the drill. Daredevil and Punisher aren't mine, as much as I wouldn't mind having them. :)**

 **The story focuses on Frank, but also has a dose of Frank/Karen coming! (It may also end up as a preface to a longer story.) This is my first Daredevil/superhero rodeo, so let me know what you think!**

* * *

It was a simple mission.

There had been bank robberies happening all over Manhattan for several weeks now. He'd seen the coverage in the newspapers, glimpsed it on a TV in a diner. The first few heists went without a hitch. The robbers had walked away with hundreds of thousands of dollars in the first couple weeks.

The news reports gave him a little twinge of satisfaction- fuck the banks. Fuck those corporate assholes who hid their ugly greed behind respectable suits.

Until last night.

Something had gone wrong.

Someone had spooked them while they held up a branch on the lower east side. They'd shot into the crowd of customers, several rounds. A pregnant woman, her four year old son, a college boy, all dead. A dozen others in Metro General.

Frank knew what he had to do.

It took him a less than twenty four hours to track them down to a corner of Alphabet City where the gentrification hadn't quite reached yet.

They were still boys, barely in their twenties. A little gang with a lot of love for cars with spinning rims, thumping sound systems and pricey sneakers. Seven of them- most few gangly, a couple beefy.

Frank never would have touched them, if they hadn't left those innocent bodies bleeding in their wake. They were small fish.

But now they had to pay. He just had to determine which one of them was the shooter. The bullets had come from a single panicked gun. Karen's article in the Bulletin had confirmed it. It was an easy job, and the sooner it was over, the better. He could go back to orchestrating the little ambush he had been crafting for a particularly vicious Chinatown gang that had a knack for smuggling enslaved women in cargo containers.

He sat in a grimy corner diner downing cup after cup of shitty coffee, watching one of the robbers show off his car's new paint job (ugly orange flames on the hood and sides), when the door's bell jingled.

Frank glanced up. A girl had walked in the door. A young girl, maybe eleven, twelve. Skinny Bambi legs and long, straggly hair hiding her face.

In that quick first glimpse, she could've been Lisa.

His heart skipped a beat in his chest and he tried to turn his attention outside, beyond the window.

But something in his gut was pulling his eyes away from the ugly flamed car and back inside.

It was nearly two in the morning. What was this little girl doing in this part of town, alone, in the middle of the night?

She took a seat in a tiny booth in the opposite corner, but the place was nearly empty, giving Frank a clear view. She wore a stretched out tank top with over-long straps that fell over her shoulders and flip flops with duct tape on the soles. She emptied a pocketful of change on the table and a couple of crumpled dollar bills and started counting before she referenced the menu.

Frank resisted the urge to tell the waitress to give her anything she wanted and put it on his bill. He knew how creepy that'd look.

The girl ordered something, he couldn't hear what, and as the waitress walked away from her table, she looked up, looked straight up at Frank as he took a gulp of his lukewarm coffee. Her gaze was hard, nothing like Lisa's sweet humor. It was a threat assessment. She had felt him watching.

Frank met her gaze evenly, trying to convey that he meant her no harm, even as he imagined what she was seeing- a hulking, muscled man watching her from under a dirty baseball cap, his eyes hidden except for the shadow of a shiner over his right cheekbone.

But the girl's face didn't flinch. They stared at each other for a long minute, almost like a challenge, before the waitress dropped a plate of silver dollars and the girl turned her full attention to the bottle of syrup, drenching the pancakes completely.

Frank knew he should tear his gaze away and turn back to his intended targets, but there was something off, something a little too strange about the scenario playing out inside the diner.

The girl downed the entire plate in no more than a couple of minutes, finishing it off by draining her water glass in a few gulps.

She counted out her money again, leaving the coins in neat little towers by denomination.

When she finished, she looked up again, eyes boring straight into Frank's, without the slightest trace of fear.

Was he imagining things, or did her gaze look like a challenge, almost?

But a challenge to what?

Eyes still on him, she slid out of the booth and headed for the door.

The bell jingled again behind her, and Frank watched as she walked past the window and around the corner.

He dropped a few bills on the table next to his empty mug and walked out of the diner, all trace of the robbers evaporating from his mind. He gave her enough lead so she wouldn't detect his presence, as he followed her several blocks to an old building with a cracked stoop and graffiti gracing its worn bricks.

She shoved the door open with her shoulder, no keys required, and Frank paused in a shadow across the street, just in case she looked over her shoulder.

But she didn't.

In a second, she was gone.

He crossed the street, making sure to stay silent, and slid into the building behind her.


	2. I Knew You'd Come

Frank listened to the girl's steps and tried to estimate where they ended. He wouldn't mind having Red's hearing at a moment like this, but he had to make do with his own trained but all-too human ears. He heard the click of a door closed, two stories up.

With barely detectable footsteps, he made his way up the two flights of creaky stairs.

There was a voice coming from behind the middle door.

"-What'd you think I sent you out there for? What'd you do with them? D'you smoke 'em?"

Frank moved closer ear against the door.

There was the muffled sound of flesh meeting flesh, and then a collapse, as if someone had been shoved and fallen over.

Frank's nostrils flared.

"Get in there and turn the camera on. Take your clothes off."

Frank's shoulder crashed against the door, swinging it open with surprising ease. She'd left it unlocked.

A man in his late thirties stared up at Frank from the couch in shock. His bare hairy chest glistened with sweat, cigarette between his thumb and finger, a 40 oz bottle of beer in his other hand. The room reeked of drugs, booze and cigarettes, the floor littered with fast food containers and wrappers. The air was stifling in the August night, putrid.

Out of the corner of his eye Frank could tell the girl stood at the doorway to what looked like a bedroom.

"Go in there and shut the door," he ordered, but she didn't move.

The man on the couch seemed to regain his senses, rising to his feet.

"Who the fuck are you!? Get outta-" But before he could get the words out, Frank bridged the distance between them, knocking him out with a well-aimed punch to the head.

He had the vague thought of ' _Don't do it. She's watching you. Don't let her see it'_ , but the rage blinded him and his fist kept pounding until he felt the bones of the skull shattering under his force. The ragged breath ceased.

Frank's fingers were sticky with blood. He wiped them on the couch in a long dark smear.

He avoided looking up for as long as he could. He could feel her eyes on him and it scared him, seeing her disgust, her fear.

"Call 911. Tell them a man broke in."

She took a step toward him, and he looked up in surprise. There was no fear in her face.

"No."

"No?"

For a long beat, they stared at each other. Frank, so good at reading people, couldn't find a pulse on her.

"I knew you'd come."

Was this a trap? A weird, weird trap he hadn't seen coming?

He looked around the room. There was no sign of anyone else's presence, no noise on the street below or out in the hallway.

He strode across the room, past her, and into the bedroom.

A camera faced the bed, connected to a computer. He opened a file. Videos, images, all of her on the filthy sheets of the bed behind him, flooded the screen one by one.

It was real.

Suddenly, the screen of the laptop slammed shut over his hands.

She was standing over him, brows knitted together. She said nothing, but from her expression the sentiment was clear; _you don't get to look at those_.

Frank searched her eyes- a dark green, almost a hazel. They were tough, but they weren't deadened. There was fire in them. Lots of it.

"You wanted me to follow you?"

She nodded.

"For that?" He motioned at the bloody mess on the couch.

She nodded again.

"I know who you are. You're the Punisher."

"Yeah. I am. So you know I gotta go before someone calls the police."

She jumps in front of the doorway, blocking him. He resists the urge to throw her over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes, like he used to do with Lisa, as he ran through the house and she hung over his shoulder upside down. This girl isn't Lisa, although he sees a shadow of his girl if he glimpses her from the corner of his eye.

Her face softens as if she can see the same scenes he does in his memory.

"Take me with you."

He laughs.

"They'll put you in a home, with your aunt, an uncle, they'll find someone to take care of you."

"That's my uncle." She motions at the couch. "There's nobody else. And I'm not going back."

Frank brushes her arm aside with just enough force to get through the doorway. He's halfway to the front door when her words hit him.

"Is this what you do? You spill the blood and you never look back to see all the other wreckage?"

He halts.

He leaves ruin in his wake. He's always known it. Widows. Orphans.

He knows it but he buries that part of his work. He's never looked his wreckage in the eye.

"Take me with you," she repeats.

Her voice almost sounds like Lisa's. _Come on Daddy, prettttttty please? Read it to me?_

The words that escape his throat are for Lisa. Soft.

"Okay. Let's go."


	3. What would Red do?

They walk through the nearly empty streets. At two in the morning Manhattan is almost quiet, aside from the distant creaks of garbage trucks collecting leaky bags from rat-infested piles on sidewalks. The girl trails after him like a shadow, half-a step behind, but she keeps up with his quick stride.

He knows how ridiculous they must look walking together and sweeps his eyes around the street to make sure no one sees them. A gangly girl with a laptop under her arm and a man with a hidden face, wearing a jacket in the middle of a heat wave. The blood on his hand is drying into the creases of his skin, turning dark, still sticky.

As he walks, Frank realizes he doesn't know where he's going.

There's no plan.

His simple mission has been derailed.

The only place to go is his apartment, which is filled to the brim with ammo, guns, rifles. He can't take her there. It would scare her. But she hasn't been the least bit scared since the moment Frank laid eyes on her, so he has to admits the real reason; no one has ever been to his hide out aside from him, and he likes it that way. If he brings her home, there's no going back. But is there an alternative?

He wishes Red would drop in from some ledge and take over- he's the softie, he should be the one to deal with this. He'd know what to do with the girl.

 _What would Red do?_ Frank muses with irony.

And then it hits him. The only option suddenly materializes and he chides himself for not thinking of it immediately.

As they reach 2nd Ave, he pulls his cap lower and shoves his blood-stained hand deep into his pocket. With his other arm he flags down a cab and slides inside after the girl. The driver's eyes linger on Frank's shadowed face underneath the visor for a moment, but he seems to make he decision to mind his own business and turns back toward the sparse traffic.

"Where to?"

"Hell's Kitchen." Frank growls, adding an intersection.

The girl props her chin against the window, watching the garish neon signs as the cab glides past them.

A few minutes later, the car deposits them in front of a prewar building with a collection of janky AC units protruding, dripping and humming, from its façade. The girl follows him up the stoop and waits patiently as he picks the lock of the front door.

Up the stairs to the top floor. As they climb, Frank regrets the scare he's bound to give her, knocking on her door in the dead of night. But it's unavoidable. When they reach her door, he thumps gently and presses his ear against it, listening for signs of movement. A shuffle and footsteps. He pulls back to give her a clear view through the peephole.

"It's me," He adds unnecessarily, in a low tone.

The door swings open and Karen blinks at him, shielding her eyes from the hallway's light. The left side of her face has a creased pattern imprinted on it from the wrinkles of her sheets.

"What the _hell_ are you doing here?" She asks, as she rubs her eyes to keep them open.

The corner of Frank's mouth almost twitches into a smile but he suppresses it, knowing it'll just fuel her anger.

"You gonna let us in?" He replies quietly.

"Us?"

The girl, who's been leaning on the wall unnoticed, steps closer to Frank.

Karen's eyes move back and forth between them, an expression of incredulity spreading across her increasingly wakeful features and finally, she steps back, giving them a clear path into her apartment.

She shuts the door quickly, hoping none of her neighbors would remember the late night intrusion or the man who'd caused it.

Frank seizes the place up in a few seconds- there isn't much of it, just a studio with a tiny kitchen.

He removes his hat, revealing a bruise under one eye. For a fleeting moment Karen wonders if she would find him more or less attractive without the perpetual shiners.

The scraping of one of her stools brings her back to reality, back to the bizarre scene unfolding in her kitchen. The girl sets down a laptop on Karen's counter and settles herself on a stool. Frank gazes at Karen for a long beat, offering no explanation.

"Be right back." He says finally, breaking the thick, expectant tension and heading straight for the bathroom, even though he's never been here and he shouldn't know where it is.

An uncomfortable silence falls between Karen and the stranger.

"I'm Karen." She introduces herself, and the girl finally looks her in the eye.

"Rory." She responds.

Karen nods, but she has no follow up. The red glow of the stove's clock behind Rory informs her that it's nearly three, and a sudden anger bubbles in her chest.

She marches straight to the bathroom, and hearing the rushing sound of the faucet, slips inside uninvited. Frank's arm is soaped to the elbow and there's a rusty tint of blood pouring into her sink. Her stomach lurches as she wonders whose it is.

The bathroom is tiny, barely enough room for the two of them to stand.

Frank washes the soap off, splashes water on his face and turns to her, dripping.

"What. The. Fuck. Is. This. Frank." Karen says in an angry hiss.

"I'm sorry. I didn't know where else to go."

"How about wherever it is you've been for the last six months?"

Frank searches her face. Is she angry he's here? Or is it possible she's angry because he hasn't been?

"What the hell are you doing in my apartment in the middle of the night? Last time you showed up so did a shower of bullets, and I'm not really looking for a repeat. And who's the kid? Where the hell did you find her?"

"I took care of her uncle. He was- he was doing things to her. She was there, she saw me, and- She wanted to come with me."

Karen couldn't help but raise her eyebrows, surprise overcoming her anger.

"She saw you _kill_ her uncle and she wanted to go with you?"

Frank nods.

"And you decided to bring her to my place?" The incredulity returned to Karen's voice. "For what, babysitting? Because I'm a woman?"

"I don't know what to do with her." Frank's steady voice betrays a little hint of panic Karen's never heard before.

"And I do?"

He shrugs.

"How did this even happen? Why would you ever…?" She trails off.

"You were there, in the courtroom- you saw the way that kid screamed at me for killing his father. It's part of what I do, I get that. But she was there, she was right there when it happened. She had nowhere else to go, except back in the system, the same system that shoved her into the arms of that pervert who made her life a living hell. I can't let that that happen."

Karen's heart thaws at the desperation in his words. The only time she's seen softness in him is when he'd talked about his family. And this girl- Karen estimates- is just around the same age Lisa would be now. Is he trying to protect her to make up for not protecting Lisa? How does he imagine this turning out, exactly?

"The Punisher adopts a nearly teenage daughter?!" She says it like a tabloid headline, trying to make him understand how ridiculous, how utterly insane it sounds.

Frank shrugs. "I'm not handing her over to Child Services again. So what else is there to do, Karen?"

A little shiver runs down her back at the sound of her name on his lips.

Karen knows what he's asking of her. But she can't do it. She won't do it. She's barely been holding it together since the last time she'd seen him on that rooftop. She's done putting herself on the line for men who disappear from her life without a second thought in her direction.

"I'm not taking her Frank. You made a mess, you deal with it. And if you can't handle it, then don't fucking make messes. I'm not here to clean up your shit."

There's fury in her eyes, and Frank can sense he's overstepped a line.

He nods. She's right. This whole mess is his responsibility, no matter how much he wishes it wasn't.

Karen regrets the harshness of her words but she doesn't apologize for saying them. Frank's perpetually stoic face still has a little flicker of panic in it.

"You can stay tonight. I've got an air mattress she can sleep on. I'll see what I can do- I'll ask around, try to find someone with a contact they trust at Child Services. I'll help if I can, but you're not pawning her off on me. It's only a matter of time before someone digs deep enough to find out you're still here, still alive, and the police start digging for dirt and coming by to ask me questions. So my apartment better be empty when I get home from work tomorrow night."

He nods.

"Come on. You blow up the mattress for Rory and I'll make up the couch for you."

She grabs sheets from a shelf and slips out of the bathroom, brushing against him in the tight space. Frank lingers behind for a second with his eyes shut, enjoying the echo of her body's accidental touch. The only time he's been touched in months has been at the receiving end of a punch. The new sensation makes him feel human, vulnerable. It scares him.

He opens his eyes and follows Karen.

Rory.

He just now realizes he hadn't even known her name.

* * *

 **Longer chapter this time... What do you guys think? I'm intrigued to hear where you think the story is going. :)**


	4. Do What You Do

Karen makes up the couch for him and the air mattress for Rory and falls asleep immediately. He can hear the girl stir on the plastic of the mattress for a few minutes before she falls asleep too. Frank lies on the couch, staring at the window until the light turns blue and the day arrives.

His mind is a police scanner, constantly buzzing between channels. The shooter from the robbery he hasn't taken care of. The body he left bloodied to a pulp tonight. The images of Rory on the computer screen. The Lisa's hair flying with the movement of the carousel, just before the gunfire had broken out. All of it echoes in his mind in turns.

There's no use pretending he'll get any sleep.

As the red glow of the stove's clock inches toward seven, Frank gets up.

Moving as quietly as he can, he makes coffee and peers into Karen's fridge. He notes a carton of eggs and not much else.

As he drinks the coffee, he wonders why he keeps collecting strays. First the pitbull, now the girl. Maybe there's still something human in him, despite how hard he's tried to snuff it out. Maybe there's someone still left who can drive him crazy, hurt him. He watches Karen sleep as he entertains the thought, but finally, he brushes it aside. Frank Castle is supposed to be dead. It's best that way, for everyone's sake.

Karen's alarm interrupts his self-exploration bullshit with a loud burst of Dancing Queen. She stirs and shuts it off, but not before Rory wakes, startled. After a quick look around the room, with the sound gone, she buries her face back into the pillow.

Karen's face reddens as she realizes he's watching her, that he witnessed her embarrassing choice of alarm. She wishes there was somewhere to hide, but the entire apartment is one open room, so she flings her robe over her shoulders and escapes to the bathroom for a shower.

Frank drains the last sip of coffee from his mug and makes another batch for her. He hasn't done this routine of domesticity in so long, and he never imagined he'd be doing it again, but it comes back easily. He sets two eggs on the counter, pops a couple of slices of bread in the toaster, and by the time she returns with her hair wet, he's served breakfast.

The unexpected gesture softens Karen. As they eat silently across the counter from each other, she finds it easy to forget who he is, what she's seen him do. Forkful of scrambled egg in his hand, face lit up by a sliver of sunlight, he looks like any ordinary person. Even his face is softer, his features relaxed.

It's nice to have someone to eat breakfast with, and she knows it must be as new to him as it is to her. If only she could keep him here, just the way he is now, normal, content. But she knows it's an illusion. This isn't all of him. The other man is inside him too. The man from the diner. The Punisher. The Punisher had tried to kill the last remnants of Frank Castle. She had seen the burnt spot where his house used to stand, and she'd known instantly that he'd been the one who torched it.

But a scrap of him had survived somehow, and here he was, sitting across from her for just a few minutes. She'd often wondered, since the first day they'd met, him lying tied to that hospital bed, what it would have been like to know Frank Castle, before that day at the carousel. She thinks she might she finally know.

When Rory wakes there's breakfast waiting for her too.

As she takes the last bite of her toast, she looks him dead in the eye.

"Now what?"

"Now we go home."

"You have one of those?" She asks with a smirk.

"Even superheros gotta sleep, kid." He fires back.

She almost laughs. "You're no Avenger."

"Fair enough." He looks around the apartment one last time. He's cleaned up every trace of their stay. When Karen returns, it'll be like last night never happened.

Satisfied, he nods toward the door and Rory follows, computer under her arm again. He's timed it perfectly- they'll blend into the morning rush, no one will ever notice the dead man and the strange girl, and if they do, Rory and Frank will be gone before anyone turns back for a second glance.

"Don't touch anything." Frank growls before she even steps over the threshold of his hideout. The place is a warehouse of artillery with a bed, a table, and a couch and not much else.

She holds up her hands as if he's pointing a gun at her and steps inside.

Frank waits to see her fear, horror even. But she takes stock carefully, and the only thing he can read is curiosity. Suddenly, she realizes there's a dog licking her bare toes and settles herself on the ground to pet him.

He watches them fawning over each other on the floor in front of several crates of explosives and below a row of guns and shakes his head as if trying to clear it. _What the hell is he thinking?_

But also- a more interesting question begins to form.

 _Why is this girl so abnormally, entirely fearless?_

Any normal kid, hell, most adults, would probably be falling apart had they seen what this girl had seen in the last twelve hours. She wasn't even dazed.

"You wanted me to follow you last night."

She looks up from the dog and nods.

"How'd you know who I was?"

"Everyone knows who you are. You're the Punisher."

"They think I'm dead."

"I knew you weren't."

"How?"

"Where else would all the bodies be coming from? Trails of gangs, thugs, and assholes dropping like flies. The police might be stupid, but I'm not. I was waiting for you to come. It was only a matter of time."

Frank leans toward her, like he's trying to see her clearer. Not her, really, but the inside of her head.

"And you aren't scared of the Punisher?" He knows, objectively speaking, he can be pretty fucking menacing to even the burliest of biker gangs.

She shakes her head. "I knew I could trust you."

"How? How could you know?" He feels like he's playing a part in a surreal PSA, quizzing her on stranger danger.

She peers at him intensely, and then examines his lair for several minutes, taking in every detail. Finally, her eyes return to meet his and she opens her mouth- but hesitates.

Frank can tell she's on the brink of revealing a secret, but hasn't quite made up her mind to divulge it.

Finally, she looks down at the dog's head, lying in her lap, and starts to rub his ears.

"Because I can feel the things you're feeling." She replies, nonchalant.

Frank's eyes narrow.

"What am I feeling now?"

"Suspicious. I'm kind of freaking you out." She watches as her words sink in.

Frank knows he's good at reading people. He's really good. But this is something else. She's summarizing his state of mind, his emotions before he's even pinpointed them himself.

"How? How do you know that?"

She sighs and finally meets his gaze. "I don't know, it's weird. It's hard to explain."

Frank waits, and finally she offers-

"I guess it's kind of like- like standing in front of a mirror and watching yourself laugh, and feeling happy. Except, I'm not watching myself in the mirror. I'm watching other people, and they overflow into me."

He sits in silence, letting her explanation sink in. He knows there are people out there with strange abilities- he keeps an eye out for them, in case they ever cross paths. Red's senses hardly fall into the realm of normal, that private eye Jessica Jones is stronger than him- he's seen her in action once- and if the rumors are right, there's a man entirely unfazed by bullets too.

But Rory's mirrored emotions- a heightened empathy, he guesses they'd call it- sounds pretty fucking useless in comparison to super-strength or being bulletproof, or even super-sensitive hearing.

Feeling other people's feelings won't be keeping her safe on the streets of Hell's Kitchen.

Rory tears herself away from the dog and stands, looking around at the stacks of crates. He watches her from the couch as she examines the guns, the rows of bullets, and the disassembled rifle he'd been cleaning, lying on the table.

She stares so intently at the pieces, he can almost see gears turning in her head. Her fingers reach out slowly, as if she anticipates that he'll stop her.

But Frank says nothing.

She picks up the parts and begins to assemble them like a puzzle. In a matter of seconds, the unloaded rifle is in one piece, and she turns to Frank, pointing it at him.

She releases the trigger with an anti-climactic little click.

"I want to do what you do."

* * *

 **Thanks for the lovely response guys! I'm having a lot of fun writing Frank Castle so far (and reading everyone else's takes on him). :) Hope you're still enjoying!**


	5. Armageddon

Even though Frank should be laughing at her suggestion, he isn't.

Rory drops the rifle and strides over to the couch, settling herself beside him.

"You have no idea what I do, kid. Best it stays that way." His voice is gruff and regretful almost.

"Of course I do. I know what all of you do. The Daredevil. Even Jessica Jones."

She opens the computer she'd abandoned earlier to play with his dog.

She turns the screen toward him. Photographs and scans of newspaper clippings, links to articles, a collection of every one of his hits, every criminal Red had ever delivered to the police, every victim saved, spanning months.

"I want you to teach me to do it too."

Frank tears his eyes from the meticulous research and examines her face.

Determination soaks every inch, from the muddy green-brown eyes, to the scatter of freckles over her cheeks, to her knitted dark brows. For split second Frank has no trouble seeing it. She's got the one thing that they all have in common, him and Red and all the others he's come across who do what he does- impenetrable conviction.

But then the absurdity of the situation returns to the forefront of his mind. She's just a child. A strange one, sure, but still a child.

He leans in closer. Her eyes are still boring into his.

"No way."

She leans back, a smirk playing across her lips.

"We'll see," she retorts confidently, and he realizes she's done it again- she's recognized- inhabited- his momentary hesitation, that tiny possibility he had entertained for just a split second. Her strange ability might be fairly useless, but he could see it getting damn annoying.

* * *

The effects of the sleepless night are setting in on Frank's body, and he knows he won't be able to finish his abandoned work from the night before unless he gets some sleep.

Rory occupies herself with the laptop, so Frank lies on top of the covers of his bed, and dozes off, but not before reiterating his warning for her not to touch anything.

When he wakes, the sky is dark outside the window and the girl is digging into a tub of ice cream that definitely hadn't been in his apartment before he'd gone to sleep.

He takes a shower and when he returns, she offers him a spoon.

"Dinner of champions." She grins, offering the tub. It's strawberry, full of little chunks of fruit. Unwittingly, he remembers Lisa picking out any remnants of fruit or candy from her ice cream cones and saving them for last in the sticky palm of her hand.

They eat in silence for a few minutes.

"You want some real dinner?" Frank asks finally, realizing he's failing pretty miserably at this whole arrangement already. "I can get you some Chinese before I head out."

Rory shakes her head and sets down her spoon. "Full."

She hands over the rest of the carton.

"Where you going?"

"To finish up some business you interrupted."

"What business is that?"

"Don't you mind."

"You were spying on those guys hanging out by the car, weren't you?"

Frank looks up at her, but she doesn't need his confirmation.

"What did they do?"

"Don't worry about it."

"You're the only one allowed to do that?"

"I don't worry. I solve problems."

"I like solving problems too."

Frank bites back a grin. She might be annoyingly but at least she lightens the mood.

Rory leans forward, taking advantage of the moment.

"What's it gonna take for you to do it? Hypothetically speaking."

"Do what?"

"Teach me to shoot. Teach me about weapons. Teach me to fight."

"I don't know…. Armageddon? Zombie Apocalypse?"

She crosses her arms and grins. "Challenge accepted."

Her stubbornness makes Frank weary, and his expression changes.

"There's no challenge. Only thing I'd challenge you to is an ice cream eating contest, but the supplies ran out." He tosses his spoon into the empty carton and hands it back to her.

"I don't need to practice to beat you in that department." She retorts, as she drop the spoons in the sink and the carton in the trash. She returns to her laptop, and Frank wonders what the hell she could possibly be doing on the thing all day, but he brushes the thought aside. He has more important shit to do than figure out the inner workings of the pre-teen mind.

He takes stock of his artillery and chooses his tools for the night's work. He can sense Rory watching him from the corner of her eye, but he ignores it. He chooses a light package- a few shotguns, some extra ammo, a smoke canister in case he needs a little distraction, nothing elaborate. The mini-defense package. He has no plans to approach tonight, not until he's dead certain which member of the little gang had pulled the trigger. And even if he does wheedle the information in time to finish the job tonight, these guys are amateurs. He's taken care of more dangerous thugs with less at his disposal.

In a manner of minutes he's ready to set out.

At the door he glances back at Rory, her face lit by the glow of her screen, the dog curled on top of her feet.

"Get some sleep. There's some leftover takeout in the fridge. Don't go wandering around bodegas and diners again in the middle of the night."

Rory gives him a wave, barely looking up from whatever it is she's so busy doing.

Frank tries to shake every last thought of her as he crosses the threshold. He needs to focus, even if he is playing in the minor leagues tonight.

The Punisher has no time for missteps.


	6. Nightstroll

Rory knows he's after them. Those boys he'd been watching. The ones who shot up the banks. She's seen them around Alphabet City, she knows where they like to hang out, she's run across them on her late-night bodega runs.

He's probably knows their favorite spots by now. Maybe most of them. But maybe not quite all of them.

It takes her a while to figure out why he hadn't taken care of them right away, why he'd just been sitting at the diner watching them. Eventually she realizes he isn't planning to kill all of them, just the one who'd done it. A murder for a murder. Or one for three.

But how would he know?

He'd keep following them.

He'd find them at one of their hangouts and he'd keep watching, keep listening, until he knew.

 _What a waste of time_ , Rory thinks.

She knows how to figure it out so much faster.

It takes her a half an hour to make up her mind.

He'd told her not to leave, and he wasn't a man to cross.

But- if he sees how useful she can be… Maybe he'll do it. Teach her.

And besides, Atticus will protect her.

She doesn't really know the dog's name- she hasn't asked, and she suspects he probably doesn't have one- but she's decided he's an Atticus Finch. A defender of justice. Or at least her, hopefully.

Atticus looks like he hasn't met a creature he hasn't immediately fallen in love with, but he is a pitbull. There has to be some ferocity in him.

At the very least, other people would think so.

She grabs a chain hanging from a nail near the door and fastens the end around his collar. Atticus yawns, stretches, and finally jumps off the couch where he's been lying across her feet.

It'll be a long walk, but it'll be worth it.

By the end of the night, the Punisher would know the truth; he needs her just as much as she needs him.

* * *

Rory walks all the way to Alphabet City, giving her plenty of time to devise a plan of action. It's after midnight, but the heat is keeping people out of their apartments; she passes groups of college kids eating ice cream in the park, people walking their dogs, stray couples whispering on stoops.

When she reaches her old neighborhood, she has to pass by a couple of the boys' regular hangouts before she finds the one they've chosen tonight.

She pauses in the shadow of a tall tree, watching them from across the street.

They're clustered in an auto repair shop advertising detailing and cheap mufflers on rusty signs. The huge sliding metal door of the repair shop is open even though the adjoining office is dark. Most of the boys watch the gangliest member of the crew telling a story of a wild night at a strip club. Occasionally they erupt into unrestrained laughter.

Rory watches them for so long Atticus decides to lie down on top of her feet. She can feel his fur tickling her bare toes as he breathes.

Has he found them too?

A tinge of hesitation arises in her gut.

There's seven of them, and Rory sees the unmistakable glint of metal tucked into the waistband of the guy telling the story- a gun.

She swallows her tinge of apprehension.

He's here. He has to be. He'd take care of them as soon as she approached. She's sure of it.

* * *

It takes Frank fifteen minutes to find them. He finds a spot in on a fire escape in the alley next to the shop and takes his post, blending into the shadows, invisible to the occasional passers by. He doesn't need to see them, he has learned which voice belongs to whom now, and he just waits for them to slip into an inevitable conversation about the heists.

He's treated to a couple of hours of boasting and bragging about exploits with 'bitches', anecdotes of drag racing and stories of booze binges that test his patience. Just as he gets antsy enough to shift his position slightly, a new voice interrupts the flow of the boys' boisterous conversation. A smaller, confident voice accompanied by the soft clink of a chain and the thwack of flip-flops hitting the pavement.

"Can I ask you guys a question?"

Frank's entire body tenses.

It's Rory.

He strains to hear the conversation over the sounds he's making as he rushes down the fire escape.

 _What the fuck is she doing here?_

* * *

Rory swallows the last crumb of her fear before she takes the first step and pushes her shoulders back confidently. She crosses the street and approaches the shop.

It takes a few moments for the guys to realize she's standing there.

Instead of looking menacing, Atticus sits at her feet and yawns, panting from the long walk and the heat.

Finally she speaks, and she's relieved to hear her voice is steady.

"Can I ask you guys a question?"

The ringleader of the crew, the tall gangly one, nods at her.

Rory tilts her head, listening for Frank, but aside from a faint clink in the alley next door, there's no sign it's him. For all she knows, the sounds might just be the rats.

"Whatchu want, little girl?" A beefy guy sitting on a pile of tires walks toward her. He's tall, in addition to being several times her width.

He crouches down to pet Atticus.

"Nice dog you got here."

"Whatchu doin' wanderin' in the middle of the night, girl?" The gangly one asks, rising to his feet.

Rory stands her ground. Head cocked to one side, she breaks the long silence following his question.

"I'm just wondering which one of you it was that shot those people."

She registers shock in all their faces at once, and focuses on emptying her own emotions and gauging each of theirs in turn before they recover their wits.

She finds him. A skinny boy lingering on the edge of the group, leaning on the hood of a rusty car.

The question triggers instantaneous fear in all of them, but-

He's the only one feeling pure, sheer panic with a dose of guilt.

His eyes are wide and he stands frozen, a deer blinded by oncoming traffic.

Rory feels the collective fear of the others bubbling into anger.

She tries to take a step back but the beefy guy who's been petting Atticus grabs the chain she's holding and yanks it.

The ringleader walks toward her, his hand slipping into his waistband and emerging with a gleaming pistol that rises straight at her chest.

The beefy guy swivels around her and slides his arm around her neck. She feels the crook of his elbow at her throat, trapping her but not quite constricting her breath.

Atticus sparks to life suddenly, jumping to his feet with a low growl.

The tall boy's gun shifts from her chest to the dog, but before she can feel relief, metal touches her left temple and she knows the guy who's holding her so tight has his gun to her head.

Rory tries to look around for Frank but she can't turn her head, the only thing in her view is the rest of the gang, who are all slowly walking toward her.

Atticus barks a warning at them but they take no heed in it.

 _Where is he?_ Rory repeats in her head, a flame of panic growing in her chest.

 _Where is he?!_


	7. A Man in a Diner Once Told Me

The guy holding the gun to Rory's head pushes her forward toward the shop. The others stay just out of Atticus' reach, but continue to inch closer and closer. Except for the frightened boy, who's still frozen in his tracks.

He stares at Rory, their eyes lock, and suddenly there's a movement behind him.

Hands wrap along both sides of his head and before he can make a sound-

His neck snaps.

The other boys don't hear his body crumble to the ground over the barking of the dog and the flurry of their own movements.

Frank shifts toward another member of the group, staying in the shadows.

He locks eyes with Rory and puts a finger to his lips, but the warning isn't necessary. Her muscles are frozen and the heavy arm wrapped around her neck is tightening its hold.

Frank points to her, makes a gesture with his fingers- 1,2,3- and motions for her to push up the gun pointed at her head and drop on the command. She gives him an almost imperceptible nod.

He raises his gun as he approaches the closest member of the gang, whose weapon hangs limply in his hand.

He gives Rory another tiny nod and she mimics it.

She can tell he wants her to shut her eyes but she can't, she has to see-

One. Two. Three.

With a single motion Frank fires at Rory's captor and with his elbow, knocks the boy standing in front of him to the ground.

She shoves the gun pointed at her head up toward the ceiling and watches the trajectory of Frank's bullet as if time has slowed down. It hits its target only inches away from her head, and suddenly- she realizes she's still caught in the crook of the guy's elbow as he falls backward and hits the ground. Rory falls on top of him and manages to wrench the gun from his fingers and into her own hands.

She stays on the ground, peering up at the rest of the scene.

The other guys, stunned, turn toward the source of the shot.

But before they can even see him, Frank fires- one-two-three-four more shots, square into their chests, and they drop to the ground, expressions of shock etched into their faces.

Frank strides over to her, peering through the huge, open door into the still night.

A couple of lights flick on in the windows of the building across the street.

He grabs her by the arm and pulls her to her feet.

She makes to drop her captor's gun but he takes it from her and stashes it in his jacket.

He grips her arm so tight it starts to go numb as he drags her toward the back door and out into the alley. Atticus trails after them, his chain clicking.

They walk like this for two blocks, maybe three, in silence, Rory struggling to keep up with Frank's stride.

Finally, he pulls her into a doorway and turns to look at her in the dim light of the street lamp. He wipes the side of her face roughly, and a strand of her hair. Rory realizes he's wiping blood, and her stomach wretches but she holds it down.

She can't see his eyes under the visor of his cap, but she doesn't need to do her trick to feel the waves of anger radiating from him, so she keeps her mouth shut and tries not to cry.

* * *

Frank can't trust himself to open his mouth- he isn't sure what might come out. A roar of pure rage? A threat ( _I'm gonna kill you_ keeps repeating in his head)? A question (it alternates with _What the fuck were you thinking?_ ).

He drags her along after him until he finds a dark corner and he finally looks down to check her for blood, for any signs of the scene they've left behind.

He wipes some tiny spots from her face, barely visible.

When he finally looks into her eyes, he realizes they're full of fear. He isn't sure what caused it- being held at gunpoint, the brutal scene she'd witnessed, or him.

Sirens wail faintly from the direction of the auto shop.

Rory's eyes widen when she hears them.

He looks her up and down again, just to make sure, and he grabs her, by the hand rather than her scrawny bicep this time.

They're two blocks from Houston. From a cab.

For the second time in twenty four hours, Frank find himself knocking on Karen's door at nearly three in the morning.

She comes to the door quicker this time, shielding her eyes from the light.

This time she holds the door open without a word, a look of sleepy defeat about her.

Frank shepards Rory and Atticus into the apartment and hesitates at the threshold.

He leans close to Karen and she feels his breath on her ear. It brings goose pimples to her skin.

"I need to talk to you. Now. Alone." His voice is low but angry.

She tries to see his eyes beneath his visor.

Anger courses through his body, she can sense it in the way he shifts his weight from foot to foot. The Frank she's met is always calm, even under gunfire. Especially under gunfire.

"Uh…" For a second she falters. Her apartment offers no privacy and it takes her a few seconds to remember- "The roof."

She slides on a pair of house slippers as Frank pokes his head through the door.

Rory has settled herself on the same stool as the night before.

"You leave this apartment, I'm not comin' after you," He states brusquely and shuts the door without giving her time to reply.

Karen stares at him, but he doesn't stick around to give an explanation, he just heads for the stairs.

They climb up to a door with a warning sign: ALARM WILL SOUND, but when Karen pushes it open, nothing happens.

She follows him out onto the roof, which is empty aside from a rusty deck chair and a wilting row of tomato plants.

The Empire State building pierces the low-hanging clouds, the light of its tip blurred. Frank walks to the edge of the roof and drops into a sitting position with his back against the ledge. He takes off his cap and Karen sees that his eyes are shut.

She sits next to him for a few minutes before she finally works up the courage to speak. She's not afraid of Frank, exactly, but she's afraid of this mood he's in because she's never seen it, and it makes her feel helpless.

"What happened?" She asks, finally, trying to meet his eye. He refuses to look at her, staring up at the tall, bright buildings of Times Square in the distance.

"They had a gun to her head, Karen."

Karen's stares at him.

"Rory?! They who? What happened?"

"I shot 'em. I had no choice."

He finally turns to Karen. "They had her at gunpoint. I had to."

Karen nods.

He finally seems to realize he must not be making much sense, and he backtracks, giving her the details of the night's events.

"I can't do this. If she had gotten hurt-" He stops.

Karen grabs his fists, holding them until he looks up into her eyes.

"I can't have anybody else's blood on my hands," he says.

"I know."

At her words, he exhales, as if her approval has finally punctured the surface of his rage, his confusion.

"I can't keep her. She put herself in danger because of me."

"Is that why you're mad? Because she did something stupid? Or because she trusted you to get her out of it?"

Frank breaks their eye contact.

Distant taxi honks and faint, drunken laughter fill the heavy silence.

"A man in a diner told me once, the people worth being in your life are the ones who can get a rise out of you, the ones who can trample all over your heart. The ones who can hurt you."

"Sounds like an asshole. Hope you didn't take his advice." Frank finally meets her eye again after a long beat.

Karen smiles. "I didn't. But he should. Because he told me he'd give anything to feel that again."

"She wants me to teach her. Teach to do what I do. Teach her war. She's just a kid." Desperation drips from the tone of his voice.

The statement doesn't surprise Karen the way that she'd expect. She feels a twinge of jealousy almost.

"Maybe she needs it. Like you do."

"You think it's right, to turn someone else into someone like me?"

Karen tries to form an answer, but the question is too big, too heavy.

Finally, she shrugs.

"Is it right to keep her weak and vulnerable for your own peace of mind? When she wants to be strong and powerful?"

As he considers this, she studies his face.

"The one thing I know is- if someone thinks they have to fight a war, there's nothing anybody else can do to stop them."

Her words sink into Frank slowly, and he's not sure if they mean she's forgiven him for that night in the woods or that she's given up on him.

After the words leave her mouth, Karen can't keep looking at him, can't sit so close. She stands and walks across the rooftop toward the Empire State.

But Frank follows her up, lagging a step or two behind her.

"So what do you do, when you know you can't stop 'em?"

"You help them, or you get out."

He hears the tiniest of cracks in her voice, but she crosses her arms and turns to him with a tiny smile on her face. The breeze carries her hair away from her face, and she's outlined against the skyscrapers of midtown, her floaty little nightgown billowing around her. There's something oddly impressive in her stance, and he finds himself wishing she would just tell him what to do, so he didn't have to make the choice.

But Karen heads toward the door to the stairs.

"Hey." He calls out softly, and she turns.

"I'm sorry I keep showing up here. You can tell me to get lost, and I will."

But Karen doesn't.

She slips inside and down the stairs, leaving him alone with the night and the city to make up his mind.

* * *

 **Note: First time writing an action scene! How was it? :)**


	8. Learning to Fish

When Frank returns to the apartment, Karen and Rory sit across the counter from each other drinking ice tea.

"Let's go, kid."

Rory jumps to her feet and grabs the end of Atticus' leash. Frank ushers her through the front door and hangs back.

"Last time I show up here in the middle of the night."

Karen smiles. "Well- things were getting a little quiet-"

Frank gives her a nod.

"I never mind you showing up. Even if it is at three in the morning."

Frank pauses for a moment, the only sign he heard her, and shuts the door.

They walk back to his apartment, a long walk. Frank needs it to clear his head.

It's ironic, how people think war is hard and scary. It had never been hard for Frank, and it hadn't ever scared him. But this- this battlefield scared the shit out of him.

He tries to push away the doubt and uncertainty.

 _You're training a soldier for battle. You've done it a hundred times._

Only this time, the battle isn't Afghanistan. It's the streets of New York.

* * *

They don't speak when they get back to the apartment that night.

Rory lies awake on the couch until the sun is up. Every time she tries to shut her eyes, the feeling of the gun on her temple returns and a knot tightens in her stomach.

She sees the eyes of the frightened boy. She sees the hands wrapping around his head, she hears the snap of his neck.

 _He wasn't innocent. He'd killed three people._ It's true, but it doesn't make her feel any better.

Every time she shuts her eyes she feels the weight of the thick arm around her neck, she her throat seizes up, choking, even though there's nothing there. Utter helplessness seizes her body, and then the snake of anger at herself slithers in- _why didn't she do this? Why didn't she try that?_ She imagines a hundred scenarios in which she fights back, a hundred things she should've done differently to not get caught, to escape, to fight back.

So she keeps her eyes open until the cracks of the blinds fill with sunlight, and finally, the sheer exhaustion shuts down her brain.

Frank listens to her shifting on the couch and he can tell she spends the night awake, probably replaying the events over and over. He knows that feeling. He knows there's nothing he can do, nothing he can say, to make it go away.

He sleeps badly, waking every hour to listen to her movements, but finally, after sunrise, he can tell she's fallen asleep.

He makes coffee and sits down to plan his takedown of the human trafficking operation in Chinatown. Now that the robbers are taken care of, he can get back to business.

But as hard as he tries to think of Chinatown, his eyes keep darting back to the sleeping figure on the couch and the long strands of hair dangling over its side.

 _What's he gonna do with her?_

The question spins around his head maybe an hour, on repeat, and at first there's just a big blank where an answer should be, but slowly, murky fragments of ideas begin to float around it.

He downs the remainder of the now-cold coffee.

 _First things first- he's going to teach her how not to get caught on the wrong end of a gun._

When Rory wakes around noon, Frank sits on one end of the table with two bagels. She joins him, and finally, halfway through her breakfast, he speaks.

"You okay?"

She shrugs. There's no use saying she is- he'd know she's lying.

After another long silence, he speaks again.

"You never pull that shit again."

She bites her lip.

"I'm sorry."

Frank searches her eyes. She is.

"You still wanna learn?"

Rory's mind propels back to the arm tightening around her throat, the metal of the gun barrel against her temple. The shots. The blood.

But also-

Time slowing.

The adrenaline coursing through her veins.

She nods.

"Okay." He eats the last bite of his bagel, still watching her intently.

"So what's the first rule of fight club?" She asks, half serious, half joking.

"The first rule of fight club is there is no fight club. I'm not teaching you to fight. I'm teaching you to win. You know what that means?"

She shakes her head.

"Forget everything you ever saw in a movie."

Rory nods.

He leans back in his chair. "What's your most important tool in a fight?"

She hesitates. "Your weapons?"

"No. Your head."

Rory shoves the last bit of bagel in her mouth and swallows it.

"You can stop anyone- kill them if you need to- with practically anything you find around you, if you use it right."

"Even me?"

He surveys her. "Even you. Good. You know your weaknesses. What are they?"

"I'm small. Not very strong."

"And your advantages?"

"I'm smart?" The statement unwittingly comes out a question.

"You're smart. And you have the element of surprise. No one expects you to know how to fight. Much less to know how to win."

Rory breaks into a grin.

"How do I win?"

"You study your opponent 'til you know 'em better than they know themselves. You figure out how they think, you anticipate what they're gonna do before they do it. You stay five steps ahead. You never go into battle unprepared. You never lose sight of your goal. And you never start anything without being damn sure you can finish it."

Rory nods.

"And then you expect the unexpected."

Rory watches him, enthralled. She hasn't heard him speak this much the entire time she's been with him. A different person sits across from her now- a soldier. His gaze is hard, watching his words sink into her.

She leans forward, eager, soaking up every word.

"But before we get into tactics and strategy-"

He rises to his feet and motions for her to do the same. He takes a shotgun- her captor's shotgun- from his jacket and unloads it.

Frank slides behind Rory and slowly raises his arm to fit around her neck. He points the gun at her temple.

"First- you're gonna tell me how you get out of this."

A wake of panic washes over Rory's muscles and she struggles not to shut her eyes, not to give in to the helplessness, the terror that threatens every fiber of reason in her being when she feels his flesh closing in around her neck.

She deals with it the way she always does-

She slides out of her own skin and into Frank's.

He's calm. Determined. And he's worried about her. A seed of doubt creeps into him, she feels it growing, and she doesn't like it.

She returns back to her own head, calm now. Determined.

Frank feels the tension, the panic, dissipate from her muscles as he holds her in his grip. His arm rests along her jugular and he feels her pulse slowing to a normal rate.

"What do you do now?" He asks her.

She throws her head backward, suddenly, with force and she pushes his gun away from her face.

Nothing happens, except Frank tightening his elbow closer to her neck.

The gun returns to her temple and clicks.

"You're dead. Again."

Rory stands limp, trying to think.

She shuts her eyes and tries to see them- the way they look, as if watching them from afar. She studies him for weaknesses.

She opens her eyes and uses both hands to force the gun away from her head, and the element of surprise works to her advantage for a split second- but then-

Frank's strength overwhelms the motion and the pressure on her throat increases again.

Click. Dead.

"You're over-thinking it."

Rory responds with a little growl.

"You think you can escape with strength or force?"

"No?"

"Damn right no. I'm three times bigger than you."

"Aren't you supposed to teach me what to do?" An edge of frustration creeps into her voice even as she tries to stop it.

"You wanna learn cool moves, sign up for karate class, kid. I'm not giving you any fish."

"What?!"

Frank chuckles. "You never heard the proverb? Give a girl a fish you'll feed her for a day. Teach her to fish and you feed her for a lifetime."

"Didn't know the Punisher was so philosophical."

Frank laughs and tightens his grip ever so slightly, bringing her back to the objective.

Rory shuts her eyes and tries to listen to what her gut is saying to her, but it doesn't seem to be saying anything at all. She lets instinct take over-

She bites his arm- hard- and at the same time, stomps down on his boot with her heel with as much force as she can muster.

Frank squirms, loosening his hold enough to pull her teeth away from his skin-

Click.

He releases the trigger into her temple.

"Better."

She grins. Still dead, but not quite as dead as last time.

He examines the bite marks- a perfect little imprint of her chompers on his forearm. The skin isn't broken.

"Again."

* * *

Note: A couple of people have brought up the Leon: The Professional vibe, and yep, spot on. I haven't seen the movie in years, but I definitely wanted to explore that kind of relationship! How are you liking Rory so far? :)


	9. Field Training

"It's never gonna happen, is it?" After hours spent trying to get free of Frank's headlock, Rory finally concedes defeat.

Frank lets her loose and sets down the gun. He takes a seat on the couch.

"What's the lesson here, kid?"

Rory mulls it over, arms crossed.

"Don't get into the situation in the first place?"

"Like I said. You don't start anything you can't finish. You do everything you gotta do to keep that-" he motions at the gun-" from happening. You scope out who's got a gun. You keep your back against a wall. If you gotta run, you run. You do whatever you gotta do to keep that shit from happening unless you know you can get out of it."

Rory sighs and drops onto the couch next to him.

"You could've just said that three hours ago."

"Get up." He grabs a crate and motions for her to stand on it. She obeys.

Rory's head becomes a few inches higher than his own.

"Here's how it could go if you weren't half his size." Frank stands in front of her and hands her the gun.

She assumes position, her scrawny arm wrapping around his neck, gun pointed to his temple. Frank slides his left arm into the crook of her left and pushes it to one side. The gun slides away from his head and he disarms her as he slips out of the headlock.

"You try."

They switch positions, and he makes her do the move until it becomes a reflex and her stomach starts to growl loud enough for him to hear it.

"Dinner." He announces, and she sighs with relief.

"And then?" She asks eagerly.

"And then sleep for you. Work for me."

"I wanna keep going!" She protests, but Frank shakes his head.

"Tomorrow. We gotta get you some gear. And then we start field training." A smile plays at the corner of his mouth.

Rory grins back and gives him a tiny sarcastic salute.

She stays up with her computer late into the night, but the exhaustion sets in and she falls asleep before he returns.

* * *

The next morning, a pair of black Doc Martens and some clothes lie next to the couch in a little pile. The apartment is empty, so Rory showers and tries on the gear- leggings, a tank top and hoodie, all black. She pulls on her socks and examines the thick leather and the steel reinforced toes of the boots.

Alex Mack wore Doc Martens. She remembers that detail vividly. She's never seen the TV show, but she had exhausted the entire supply of YA books at her local library branch a couple of years ago and the Alex Mack books were her favorite series.

Rory laces up the boots eagerly and examines herself in the cracked mirror next to the front door, which she suspects, had been leftover from the last tenants. She looks like a cat burglar, except for the boots, which are the opposite of stealthy.

Her loose hair is a liability, she decides, and drops her hood. She finds a couple of rubber bands in one of the drawers in the kitchen and set to braiding her hair. She'd spent hours watching Youtube tutorials whenever Roger had finally passed out drunk or high or asleep. Videos of heart transplants, DIY electronics repairs, Krav Maga moves (which these last few days had proven quite useless), and also- tutorials of teenage girls doing makeup or braiding their hair into mermaid braids, crown braids, all sorts of cool, complicated hairstyles. Rory had practiced them over and over again, until her hands could do the moves from muscle memory. For those few minutes, braiding her hair, she felt like a normal girl, a real girl, like the ones from the videos.

Today, Rory decides on Dutch boxer braids to keep all the little wisps away from her face.

As she admires the finished product, Frank walks in with a couple of sandwiches from the deli.

He sets them down and examines her critically.

He reaches out and tugs on one of the braids.

She rolls her eyes at him.

"So- what's the lesson today?" She asks, trying to tame the eagerness in her voice and failing.

Frank settles down in front of one of the sandwiches and passes her a cherry coke from the plastic bag he's carrying.

She sheds the hoodie and joins him, taking a long gulp of the cold drink.

"Today we test how good you are at gathering intel."

"To know your enemy."

He gives her a nod and digs into his BLT.

"I'm really fucking good."

If Frank's mouth weren't so full he'd be grinning. Finally he swallows-

"Oh yeah?"

Rory doesn't have to flit into his mind to read the amusement etched over his face. She crosses her arms.

She might be twelve, and she might be no soldier, but she's got a few tricks up her sleeve too.

"Wanna see?"

"Sure."

"Tonight. It should be dark, right? Less people. Less chance of getting noticed."

Frank nods.

Rory takes another sip of her cherry coke. She unwraps her BLT and cracks open her laptop, ignoring Frank. She's got a few hours of work to do before the demo begins.

* * *

After midnight, they make their way toward Alphabet City again. They stay in the shadows, Rory a half-step behind Frank.

When they get to Avenue A, Frank halts.

"What now?"

Rory grabs his hand and leads him a few more blocks.

Frank follows her like a guard dog, keeping his eyes peeled for anyone who might be noticing them, but this is Manhattan, where movie stars, pimps and sequin-garbed drag queens walk the streets with equal ease drawing minimal attention. No one cares for the man in the army jacket and the little girl in head-to toe black.

Finally, Rory leads him past a couple of teenaged boys with neck tattoos and into a five-story walk up with a propped open front door.

They climb all the way to the top and onto the roof.

The night is hot like an oven and Rory has tied the hoodie around her waist, but her hairline glistens with sweat. She has no idea how Frank manages to keep that jacket on all the time.

She leads him to the edge of the roof that overlooks the street.

From the black leather fanny pack slung over her shoulder, she pulls a pair of tiny binoculars and begins to search the windows-

Frank kneels next to her, leaning his arms on the ledge.

She hands over the binoculars and points to a window across the street.

"That's Josie. She looks like she's sixteen. Her boyfriend is like, forty. He comes and goes. When they moved in, he'd bring her flowers, and chocolates and picks her up in this red Porsche. A month ago, he started bringing a bunch of other guys over there. And now- they come on their own, even when he's not around."

Frank watches Josie as she changes out of a scruffy pair of shorts and into a silk teddy. A greenish bruise stretches over her right shoulder. She drops her hair from its ponytail and hides it.

A hoarse old woman's voice rings out through the street, speaking urgent Spanish.

Rory points to another, more rundown building farther away.

An older woman, late sixties, early seventies, leans out of her window, calling "Rico!" toward the steps of the building on whose roof Rory and Frank are standing.

"That's Senora Rodriguez." Rory peers over the edge of the roof, pointing at the boy on the left. "And that's Rico, her grandson she's raised since he was three. He used to buy me coconut popsicles if he ever saw me in the bodega, but then when he turned fourteen, he started hanging out with Freddie G ad his crew, and they introduced him to amphetamines. Selling amphetamines, taking amphetamines. He OD'ed last week- and now he's back to hanging with Freddie. Rumor is, someone's trying to get in on their turf, selling to the NYU kids. They're just waiting to figure out who the man in charge is."

Frank's hand twitches involuntarily in the direction of his gun.

Rory turns to him.

"And then there's Brooklyn- I lived there, in a foster home before they shoved me here with Roger. There was a house down the street- a lotta kids, girls mostly- lived there. And a lotta men came by. Hoards of them."

Frank takes a long hard look at her and hands the binoculars back.

"So, do I pass?"

"Maybe."

Rory grins and raises her hand for a high five.

"Don't get cocky, kid."

She keeps her hand out with determination, eyebrows raised.

Finally, Frank obliges grudgingly and turns back toward the street, his eyes flitting from mark to mark.

Suddenly, a soft voice speaks from the opposite end of the root.

"You know Frank, I always suspected that bullet had affected your brain, but I hadn't pegged you for someone who'd completely lost his mind."

Rory whips around in the direction of the words, but Frank merely sighs heavily.

Silhouetted against the lights of the buildings in the distance, Rory makes out a reddish body and a head with two tiny horns protruding.

"Red." Frank finally turns to face him. "I was wondering how long it'd take you to show up. Rory- meet Mr. Righteous."

* * *

Note: Thanks to all of you lovely readers and reviewers! One of my reviewers asked about Alphabet City, and yes, it's a neighborhood in Manhattan. It gets its name from the fact that it's on the far east end of the island where the avenues are named after letters rather than numbers (everywhere else in Manhattan).


	10. Aurora Skye

Frank walks toward Red, motioning for Rory to stay put.

"Are you out of your mind? What are you doing with her?"

"I'm training her."

"Training her for what? High school? She's a twelve year old girl."

"Hey!" Rory protests from the other side of the roof.

Frank shoots her a look and she turns back to the street and peers into her binoculars.

"That child needs a home, not lessons from you, Frank."

"Am I a corrupting influence?" He asks, voice dripping with sarcasm.

"I'm glad you're finding this funny. Makes one of us." Red retorts, and Frank can almost see the steam emanating from under his helmet. Like a cartoon. Or a tea kettle.

Rory is walking over to them. She stops at Frank's side, her brows furrowed up at the Daredevil helmet.

"No offense, dude, but there's a reason I didn't ask for your help."

"You're not the one I'm accusing of bad decision-making."

Frank crosses his arms.

"She needs a home, Frank. Parents. Not _this._ "

"I can see how he's earned 'Mr. Righteous'," Rory glances up at Frank.

"And how old were you, Red, when you started learning those ninja moves you do?" Frank asks.

"That's not the same-"

"Isn't it? And don't give me some 'martial _art_ ' answer either, because you're not entering tournaments, are you? You're beating up shitbags."

Daredevil looked away, face toward the city.

"You're making a real dumb move, Frank."

With a swift leap, he disappears over the edge of the roof.

Frank stares after him in silence for a few long seconds as Rory studies his face. With a shake of his head, he turns back to her.

"Let's pick this up tomorrow."

"But-" Rory tries to protest, but Frank is already at the ladder to the fire escape, climbing over the edge. She scrambles to shove the binoculars into the fanny pack slung across her shoulders and follows him down. Perplexed by the sudden change in plan, she tries to read him, but the feelings are complicated, hard to make out. She feels guilt, and anger, and maybe even a hint of fear. She stays a half-step behind him as they walk home in silence.

Frank leaves Rory in the apartment, and once again, he makes his way to Hell's Kitchen. Karen must be exhausted. He's barely let her sleep this week with his late-night visits.

But he's in a strange mood, he knows training Rory is a lost cause tonight, just like the ambush he should be planning. But there's no use. He doesn't want to be inside. He wants to walk. And he wants to see Karen. Somehow Karen makes all the chaos a little more bearable.

Is it Red's interference that's bugging him? Or maybe the matter of fact way Rory recounts the horrors she lives next door to? Horrors no twelve year old should be thinking about.

But this is the city they live in.

And there isn't much use pretending it isn't.

Frank finally arrives at Karen's building, but he doesn't bother with the front door this time. He climbs up the fire escape.

Her window is open, he sees her curtain flutter in the breeze. The AC must be busted. He sits on the step outside the window and peers in. Karen's face is lit with a yellowish glow by the street lamps below, her hairline damp with sweat, her face blank, muscles relaxed.

"Karen," He whispers, soft.

She stirs, her eyes flutter open.

"Frank?" She sounds as if she's not quite sure if she's awake or dreaming.

"Yeah. Sorry to wake you."

"I just wish you'd use the phone, like a normal person. Or at least the door."

Frank smiles, almost against his will.

Karen sits up in bed. "What is so urgent?"

"I just realized- You don't have any way to contact me, do you. If you find anything, about Rory." He hands her a burner- a flip phone that looks like a blast from the past. Karen smiles down at it.

"I used to have one of these, in high school-" She flips it open. There's only one number, and no name in the contacts. "I saved up my salary for months… I worked at the Dairy Queen…" She looks up at Frank and drops the phone on her nightstand. "My contact- she hasn't had time to dig much yet, she just slipped me Rory's file."

Karen walks over to her bag and digs inside. She pulls out a manila folder and hands it to Frank.

"The police found the body- Roger Carpenter, her uncle. They think she's in the wind, they've classified her as a runaway. She's wanted for questioning- they don't think she's a suspect, but they think she might've witnessed the attack."

"Runaway." Frank grunted.

"Yeah- police would rather believe she ran. Foster kid from a shitty neighborhood goes off the grid- who cares? Prep school girl from the Upper East Side? You better believe they'd be treating that as an abduction. The papers would have her little angelic blue-eyed face plastered all across the front page." Karen's voice is bitter with the injustice. He can tell the thoughts have been swirling in her mind for a while.

"It's okay. It's better this way- no one will miss her. No one will come looking. She's safe now." Frank wants to touch Karen's hand, to put his fingers over hers and reassure her, but the idea is scary, so he simply looks down at the file and pretends he doesn't see her wipe her eyes briskly.

"Aurora Skye. Jesus. Who names their kid that?"

"She entered the system when she was three. Her mother OD'd when Rory was three. She screamed and cried for a day before the neighbors finally called the cops and found her. She was passed around from foster home to foster home, until they finally located her uncle, Roger, only living relative. She went to live with him last October. Funny thing is- When they took her, they never found a birth certificate. They checked hospital records, but they couldn't find anyone with that name."

He flips through the papers.

A school picture is paperclipped to one of the sheets. Rory, her front teeth missing, grins, maybe six. When he flips through again, in the next picture, Rory's face, at nine, is unsmiling, eyes determined, eyebrows furrowed.

Frank continues flipping through the papers, through Rory's school pictures, until he finds it- a list of the foster homes. He slides his finger down to the last one- Vinegar Hill, Brooklyn. Is that where the house filled with children is?

He shuts the folder. "Thanks. I'll call next time."

Karen watches as he climbs out the window, down the fire escape, and disappears into the shadows of the street. Frank doesn't seem to think much of Rory's birth certificate missing, but she has a strange feeling about it. Her gut says there's something there.

She lays back in bed and knows that when she gets to work, it'll be the first thing she digs into, and not the assignment she's actually supposed to be working on (an expose on a series of beauty salons who import and trap their workforce into indentured servitude and forced labor).

As she pushes her hair away from her sweaty neck and tries to ignore the oven-like temperature even in the dead of the night, tossing and turning to find a comfortable position in bed, it dawns on her- there will always be more questions than answers, more dark corners than light than she can illuminate.

She falls asleep with a look of determination on her face, and the next morning, even though she's exhausted, she gets to work earlier than anyone else, ready to dig.

* * *

Note:

So it's been a while since I've updated! A long long while. (I've updated and made a few small changes to the dialogue in Chapter Nine, so feel free to skim over it again. ) I thought I'd worked myself into a corner with this story, but it's been on my mind for the last few weeks, so I thought I'd give it another go. :) Hope you still enjoy it!


	11. Not Our Choice to Make

When Frank returns, Rory lays on the couch, her eyes alert and face glowing blue with the light of her computer screen, even though the sun is beginning to rise outside the window. He peers down at her screen as he slips inside. He catches a glimpse of something like craigslist, before she hears his footsteps and slams the laptop shut.

"Working?" She asks, turning to face him.

He shakes his head slightly. "Walking."

"To Karen's?" She smiles, sly.

"What are you doing on there?" He motions at her computer.

"What's next on the syllabus?" She deflects, taking a page out of his book.

"Sleep."

Rory rolls her eyes. "And after that?"

"We'll see."

"You overwhelm me with information," she sets her computer on the floor next to the sleeping dog and slides down into a horizontal position on the couch.

By the time Frank sits at the table to take stock of his inventory and assess what he might need for his ambush on the Chinatown ring, Rory's eyes are shut.

He considers- how many of them are there?

It seems a lifetime ago that he began planning this attack. Now thoughts of Rory keep infiltrating his work. The house in Vinegar Hill, mostly. He keeps picturing a shuttered up mansion full of creepy bastards and young girls. He tries to fight it, tries to focus on the Chinatown gang. It had taken him months to gather enough intel on their comings and goings to start planning an attack that would take out every last one of them. He couldn't start a new mission before the first was taken care of.

Nearly an hour passes before he finally has to concede.

The ambush will have to wait another day.

Frank opens Rory's file and finds the exact address.

He leaves the ammo at home. It'll be too tempting.

Before he takes action, he needs to investigate.

* * *

Nobody thinks much of Rory's missing birth certificate. Not Frank, not Jessie, the social worker.

But Karen searches through Eliza Skye's medical records at every hospital in the tristate area and comes up empty. There is no record of a pre-natal visit, much less a birth. Granted, an addict might not be the optimal example for prenatal care, but…

Karen expands her search beyond the tristate.

It takes forever, going through each individual system for each individual state.

Five hours later, her stomach growling in protest of her skipping lunch, Karen finally finds a record of Eliza in the year of Rory's birth. The only problem is-

The record isn't a hospital visit or a clinic appointment.

It's a prison record.

Eliza Skye, 18 months for drug possession in the Sunshine State.

No mention of a pregnancy.

Karen finally leans back and tears her eyes from the computer screen. She finally registers the protests of her stomach, and she grabs her purse, heading toward the elevators.

Eliza isn't Rory's mother. But who is? Where did Rory come from and how did she end up with Eliza?

How is she ever going to find out what happened with a long-dead drug addict over a decade ago? It won't be easy, unearthing any associates or friends- and even if she does, Karen has a sneaking suspicion not many of them will have been sober enough to have very reliable memories.

Karen finds herself at her favorite falafel cart without quite having a memory of how she got there. She interrupts her trail of thought long enough to order and pay. The smell of the food makes her stomach do another flip. Her office too far, she heads to the tiny park around the corner instead, and finds an empty bench. As she takes an enormous bite from her pita, mind still swirling around the best approach to uncovering Eliza's associates from twelve years ago-

"Skip breakfast?"

Karen jumps at the sound of the voice, so close to her ear.

She'd been so lost in her thoughts- and her falafel- she hadn't noticed Matt take the seat next to her on the bench. She swallows and wipes her lips.

"What are you doing here?"

Matt's eyebrow arches. "Happy to see me, I see."

Karen opens her mouth and then reconsiders. She takes another bite of her pita instead.

They sit in silence as Karen chews. Matt unwraps his own deli sandwich and takes a bite.

"So what brings you to my lunch spot, Matt? Let's be honest- you don't drop by without a reason these days. Is it Foggy? Is he okay?"

"Foggy's fine, as far as I know- More than fine, actually. He's a rising star at Jeri Hogarth's firm… But that's not why I'm here."

"What is it then?"

"It's Frank, Karen."

Karen's eyes dart away from Matt, involuntarily.

"Has he contacted you?"

Karen knows she doesn't even need to answer verbally. He's already read the spike in her pulse as a yes.

"So what if he has? Do I need to send a log of my phone calls and visitors to Matt Murdock?" Karen's anger is so close to the surface these days and the hunger and sleeplessness don't help. Who does Matt think he is? Lying to her for months, dropping a bomb on her and then showing up in her life months later, questioning _her_ decisions?

"Wow. I guess I deserved that." Matt takes a sip from his coffee. He turns toward her, and Karen can't help but feel a jolt of electricity as she studies his stubble and the soft curves of his lips. But she looks away.

"Why do you care about Frank?" She asks, voice as flat as she can manage.

Matt hesitates, as if he's gauging how much to tell her-

"I think he might be in trouble Karen."

"Frank's a big boy. He can take care of himself." She stuffs the last bite of her falafel into her mouth and wonders if she should get a second on the way back to the office.

"I'm not sure he can. He's got a… protege."

Karen says nothing, but she knows he can tell that the information isn't a surprise to her.

"You don't think it's wrong, Karen? Training a twelve year old girl to…. fight? Who knows, maybe to kill, the way he does? Putting a _child_ in danger?"

Karen shrugs. "What's more dangerous in this city, Matt? Training a twelve year old girl who wants to fight? Or not training her? Do you know how he met her?"

Matt's quiet. He doesn't know, and he doesn't want to admit it.

"Her uncle forcing her to cam on the DarkNet, Matt. Frank took care of him. He told her to call the police. But she wanted to go with Frank. Child Services were the ones who placed her with her uncle. So maybe it's not quite so black and white as you make it sound. As black and white as you might want it to be."

"Don't tell me you agree with what he's doing, Karen. I know you don't. We can't rely on vigilante justice, we have to make the system work-"

"When was the last time you went out with your mask, Matt?" Karen cuts him off.

"That's not-" He begins to protest, but she cuts him off again.

"The same? And how's it different?"

"She's a _child_ Karen."

Karen turns to face him. "Maybe she is. But she's lived through a horrific, dehumanizing trauma no one should have to face, at any age. What makes you so qualified to know what she needs, Matt? You go out into the streets to protect your neighbors, to make the city safer, you have a vision of what this place should be- and I'm not saying there isn't courage in that- but Frank- Frank and Rory, they go out onto the streets to survive. It's what keeps them alive, and you and I, we might not like that. But it isn't our choice to make, Matt."

Karen slips her purse over her shoulder and stands.

"As much as we might wish it was." With a last glance at Matt, still sitting on the bench, holding the empty wrapper of his sandwich in his hand, she turns away and heads back to her office.

* * *

Note: Let me know if there's anything you're curious about and would like me to explore further! It's my first foray into the superhero/crime world and I'd love to know what aspects of the story (characters, events, etc) interest you guys the most!


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